Maths

I just got out of math class and I am 
so
very
sad

In the past, I struggled in math because my mind was not quick enough to pick up on the patterns, to move around equations without having to plod out each step

But if I took my time and I worked hard, it always made sense in the end, because that’s how I thought mathematics was arranged

methodically

delicately

with answers proven at every corner. 

And I always liked that in my education, works I’d studied in art history would appear in English, referenced in poetry, alluded to in novels;

concepts we’d discussed in physics turned up in TOK, and

history gave context for the movement of thematic plays,

and it was all wrapped up and cohesive and all so brilliantly engaging.

And off I went from high school to discover the wider world of college, bright and full of hope

at first everything was new and blinding

and I found solace in being lost along with the rest of the crowd

But as the weeks wore on and morphed into months, my companions fell away, fitting themselves into groves and rhythm

while I paddled aimlessly and laboriously

my traitorous boat overturning in the storm and dumping me into the waves. 

And all my solaces that had settled me through my past suffering:

drama, and organization, and expression of singing, writing, acting, feeling; expansion of mind and a voracious hunger for knowledge
have 
faded
into 
apathy
and sleep, and sadness

And I sought our churches for fulfillment, but I found no God within those walls, only false people

I joined a team, declared myself an athlete, hoping it would motivate me toward self-betterment

but I gained only exhaustion and displacement among the camaraderie of those around me

I took classes I thought would engage me but found only hopelessness.

The subjects that once drove me and bent my mind now bounce against my skull

a steady repetition of

“haven’t you read this?

what about that?

no?

pity, eye roll, pursed lips, see, I took a philosophy class, an existentialism class, a class on the beaten,

the worn,

the weak,

I’m brilliant, gifted, see?

I’m first in my class on how to talk down to the plebeians around me,

on how to maintain a facade of nonchalance,

hip disillusionment,

condescension,

faux-esotericism,

what’s wrong with you, don’t you see, can’t you connect the dots?

your whole life is a construct, and the deeper you go, the less meaning you’ll find…”

In writing, where every story we read champions the human ability to absolutely fuck up our lives in search of elusive happiness

yet gives no feeling of connection or identity;

where the unresolved conflict carries over into E&D, where our pattern of living is a sad attempt to discover truth,

of which ultimately there is none, and we’ve built up a discontenting society that we will never escape…

But I resent this because all I want to do is slide into this society,

to grasp the earth in my hands, create, to curl up by a fire and read,

read on the triumph of the human spirit,

on the delicate hope and progress that can arise from destruction,

on mystics and far-off stories,

outlandish tales, escape,

without burning it to the ground

and proclaiming that it bore no truth and was false, a way of constructing reality to make it bearable.

I want to travel and explore and hear the kaleidoscope of stories carried within individual souls,

I want passion,

I want wandering around art museums,

I want people-watching to find the sweetest families

and the most vivid tattoos

and the most brilliant eyes;

earth-searching for the darkest bird in the flock,

the ripest fruit on the branch,

the softest cloud and bluest patch of sky,

coffee-shop-sitting to appreciate stillness,

and the lyricism in a vibrant crowd of movement,

the dance between strangers encountering each other for the first and last time, chalking up each other’s smiles and words to an already distant memory.

I want reality, this reality, not a small, walled-in room of hostile peers, spewing out resentment and trapping us in, theorizing on the world outside and analyzing it past all meaning.

We’ll never find originality, they say, but isn’t that almost freeing?

And in all this time, haven’t we only learned that beyond the shadows of our mistakes and cruelties,

the world can always be re-worked, re-awakened, pushed to betterment?

And yet I am told I’m only living out the same, sad trivialities that plagued my ancestors and will never find fulfillment anywhere.

And even in math, my once-hated foe

I weep for my loss of its baby-faced, colorblocked organization

as a whirlwind discussion of Kant

and the struggle to truly prove anything at an abstract level

and the meaninglessness in the deeper and deeper regions, passes me by.

Even that has betrayed me. 

And most don’t understand because I’m still pumping out good grades,

rising from bed every morning,

dredging to class,

sitting stone-faced,

fighting back tears of frustration

and sadness

and why does this all feel

so,

so

wrong,

falling to bed,

keeping busy to avoid the pounding fears,

insecurities,

haunted by them in my dreams,

lost and alone and afraid and so inexplicably unhappy.

I’m all the wrong shapes, a square pegged head,

is this what higher learning is supposed to inspire?

Why does this cost so much, in every sense of the word?

But what makes me the most angry is that I know these are the years that are praised and pedestaled,

that I will look back when I’m older,

so mournfully, wishing I had cherished them and lived them out in full,

and yet here I am right in the midst of them but buried,

suffocating under their weight, lost in a maze of disillusionment and sadness and weeping and

so

fucking

angry

that I’m losing myself, I’m losing these years, and I’ll never get them back,

how can I change,

how can I be happier,

how will I ever find my out of this labyrinth?

... How will I ever be more than a cliche?

I came to a small school, head brimming with hope of what I might gain from a liberal arts education, ecstatic to surround myself with passionate, exuberant, encouraging individuals;

and am instead being battered by its snobbery and solitude and the ranks of pseudo-intellectuals, filled me with hopelessness in my disconnect, smallness in my limitations, sadness. Sadness.